by John McShane
When she was 18, Susan took her one and only job, as a trainee cook in the kitchens of West Lothian College. It was a six-month contract and then it stopped. After that, she did voluntary work helping the elderly while being financially supported by her parents. She did not move out of the family home, and she did not go out on dates.
‘I always sang, but it was just something I did for pleasure,’ she says. ‘I was needed at home most of the time anyway.’ On occasions Susan went to the theatre to hear professional singers. She first heard ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ at a production of Les Misérables at the Playhouse in Edinburgh. ‘It took my breath away. It was amazing.’ She was singing in public, too – after a fashion. Shaky, grainy footage of several of those ‘performances’ was to emerge once she was a star. There would be stills from them in newspapers and magazines and they too would take their place on the internet for her growing number of admirers to watch.
In 1984 Susan appeared behind the microphone at Motherwell FC’s Fir Park Social Club in a singing contest between locals and visitors from the Coventry Tam O’Shanter Club after one of the visitors dropped out. A pretty, slender Susan, sporting a typical 1980s perm, sang note-perfect versions of ‘I Don’t Know How To Love Him’ from Jesus Christ Superstar and Barbra Streisand’s ‘The Way We Were’.
One of the audience that evening was to recall after Susan became famous: ‘I can remember that she was a shy young girl but also very attractive back then – she turned a few heads when she came into the club. She was not even supposed to be singing but agreed to perform for the Tam O’Shanter team because someone had dropped out.
‘Even back then, I don’t think anyone expected too much from her because she was so shy, but when she began singing people took notice. I watched Susan on Britain’s Got Talent but didn’t recognise her as the girl from my video until a relation called and asked if I still had the tape. It’s great Susan is finally getting some recognition. She is a great singer and it seems right that at some point she would get the credit she deserved.’
In 1995 Susan went to Braehead Shopping Centre in Glasgow to audition for My Kind of People, a popular ITV talent show presented by Michael Barrymore, then at the height of his fame and popularity. Susan, her hair short by now and wearing a sober coat, bravely sang ‘I Don’t Know How to Love Him’ as Barrymore pulled faces behind her back and at one stage lay on the ground pretending to look up her skirt. He ended by throwing his arms around her and giving her a mock embrace.
‘I was too nervous,’ she said. ‘I was shaking so much I could hardly sing. I got through it, but I never made it onto television. I just wasn’t ready.’
That wasn’t her only failure. She entered a local talent competition a number of times from 1997 but never won the £5,000 prize. Robert Norris, who organised the Fauldhouse Miners Welfare Club competition, said, ‘Susan was a very, very shy person, but when that voice came out she was absolutely wonderful. She always came to the competition on her own – I think her brother would drop her off. Susan could sing any song from any musical, it was effortless. I remember when she performed ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ and you could have heard a pin drop. She didn’t ever win, but the talent there was of a very high standard.’
In 1999 she sang the classic sad ballad ‘Cry Me A River’ for a charity CD recorded by the local community to celebrate the Millennium. Only 1,000 copies of the disc were made and, a decade later, they were to become collector’s items. The song remained one of her favourites and she recorded it again once she was famous.
Two years later she appeared in the West Lothian Showcase talent competition final at the Deans Community High School in Livingston. She was presented with a certificate – along with around 15 other finalists – for her troubles after performing ‘What I Did For Love’ from the Broadway hit musical A Chorus Line.
Other finalists in the event organised by the West Lothian Voluntary Arts Council included a ten-year-old trumpet player and a girl singer aged 12. The audience paid £3 each to watch. There were other appearances, and other failures.
In 2001 she appeared at Linlithgow Rose Social Club, with its 70s-style decor visually reminiscent of the hit comedy series Phoenix Nights. One of the audience filmed the evening, and again it turned into an internet hit when it came to light years later. Wearing a long, sequined dress she bumped into a table of drinkers as she moved towards the microphone. In front of an audience of fewer than 200 people she sang ‘Whistle Down The Wind’ from the musical of the same name, another Andrew Lloyd Webber song, followed by ‘I Don’t Know How To Love Him’ from Jesus Christ Superstar. Standing virtually stationary she then gave her version of the Jennifer Rush ballad ‘The Power Of Love’, accompanied by an amateur keyboard player. Once finished she pulled a funny face and hurried off stage.
There was tragedy too around this time in her life. Susan’s sister Kathleen died from an asthma attack and her father also passed away, both within a relatively short space of time, leaving Susan living alone with her mother.
Susan carried on along with the karaoke machine at local pubs and bars. On Friday nights she’d sing at the Happy Valley Hotel, while on Sundays she’d go down the road to Moran’s Turf Bar. Customers recalled how she would sit drinking lemonade and eating a packet of crisps. ‘We have the karaoke here just to cheer everyone up. She’d pop in and no one really paid her much attention, and if she wasn’t in the mood, she’d just walk out. She’s a Blackburn bairn through and through, keeps herself to herself and she does what she wants,’ said one. The day after Susan took the world by storm on Britain’s Got Talent, she went to Moran’s and, to the astonishment of the crowd that Sunday got up on the tiny stage in the corner and sang ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’. She also got a standing ovation at church that Easter and had to sign autographs on the way in.
For several years she took singing lessons from a local voice coach, Fred O’Neil, who said, ‘As a singer she always had a lovely, calm, beautiful rounded voice. It is a very good instrument.’
But there was further heartache ahead.
In 2007, her beloved mother Bridget, whom Susan had cared for devotedly in her later years, died aged 91, leaving Susan alone with just her eight-year-old cat Pebbles for company in the pebble-dashed council house.
Susan carried on with her life, collecting just under £130 a week in various benefits and spending her time watching television and reading. She was a volunteer at Our Lady of Lourdes church in Whitburn, visiting the elderly, but her mother’s death cast a giant shadow. She had already considered stopping singing, and for two years after Bridget’s death she did not sing at all.
Much of her shopping was done at the Mill Centre in Blackburn. She regularly went to David Stein Butchers or into the Mill Café for a snack. If she fancied going further afield she would catch the No. 8 bus into Bathgate, two miles away, and have a £5.60 fish supper – her favourite meal – at Valentes takeaway. Sometimes she would have her hair styled at Val’s hairdressers. She still received some abuse as she walked around the town, with youngsters calling her ‘Susie Simple’ – or worse.
But all this was to change and shortly Susan Boyle, middle-aged Scots spinster, would become SuBo, a true superstar. And a large part of that transformation was due to her late mother Bridget.
‘She was the one who said I should enter Britain’s Got Talent. We used to watch it together. She thought I would win. But after she died I didn’t feel like singing. I wasn’t up to it. Before that I sang in church choirs and I sang karaoke in the local pubs almost every week,’ she said.
Susan later described the events of that BGT audition day in January 2009 – three months ahead of transmission – including all the preliminaries leading up to her appearance in front of the three judges who were to decide her fate. It gives a fascinating insight into her frame of mind and her attitude to the challenge that lay ahead of her.
‘I’d seen the show on television, like everyone. And I had promised my mum just before she died
that I would do something with my life. So I applied for it. Filled out the application form, went through the preliminaries, went before the panel and then was lucky enough to be picked by them, too.
‘The panel asked what you’d done in the past and what kind of act you had, and if you had a stage name! I just thought, well, my own name will do, won’t it? I didn’t know whether I needed a stage name or not. Was it enough to just put my own name down?’
She went on to describe why she will never forget audition day, 21 January. ‘A lot of people dream about being on television, about making records, about entertaining people. You chance your arm and see how far you can get. But to be honest I never thought for a minute that I would get this far.
‘The audition was at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre. I could see the place, but I kept on taking the wrong bus. I must have changed buses about six times to get to the place and I could see it all the time. I got there hours early and sat in the holding room watching everybody do their audition one by one. Everybody kept saying to me, “Are you sure you should be at this audition?” I saw dance groups come and go, men with spoons, dogs.’
Susan described her performance of ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ and her dialogue with Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan and Amanda Holden – the images that millions were later to see – but she also revealed: ‘My original intention was to go on in a football strip, a Celtic strip, just to get the attention. But my family told me they’d completely disown me if I did.’ Luckily, perhaps, she decided not to.
‘By the time I’d finished my audition I’d missed my last bus home so one of the runners got me a taxi. I was on a real high. It was like Celtic winning the cup. I’d seen a production of Les Misérables in Edinburgh, at the Playhouse, and I liked the mother figure. It was after my mother died that I’d seen the show and I loved the song and what it meant. I’d sort of regressed after she’d died, if you like. It was life-changing not having her to depend on so much. I had to learn to do things for myself. This was a promise that I’d made to my mum, that I’d do something with my singing. She was the reason I pursued my singing. She was the reason I became a member of choirs and sang in wee clubs. Just to see what I could do. She had a good belief that I could do it. She was a good woman. We’d seen a soloist singing on the TV just before she passed and I said, “Is that what you want me to do, Mum?” and she said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you serious?” and she said, “Of course I am.”’ So Susan decided to do something about it.
‘My confidence was pretty down at that time. A good way of levelling it out, I found, was to tell myself that even though she’s not here physically, mentally and spiritually she is. That’s what keeps you going. I have my faith, which is the backbone of who I am, really.’
CHAPTER TWO
THE DAY THAT
CHANGED HER LIFE
Friday, 10 April 2009 was the day before the storm. The pre-recorded Britain’s Got Talent was to be transmitted the next evening at 7.45 on ITV1 and already the newspapers were beginning to read the runes. ‘Something’ was about to happen. No one, however, could predict exactly what it was to be, the magnitude of what was to follow. How could they? How could anyone be prepared for the explosion that was to take place?
A smattering of small, fairly discreet, newspaper stories emerged that Friday which gave a slight but, understandably, totally underplayed hint of what was about to take place.
The sedate Daily Telegraph wrote: ‘A 48-year-old church volunteer who admits to having never been kissed is tipped to be the next winner of Britain’s Got Talent. Susan Boyle, from Bathgate, West Lothian, astonished the judges on the ITV1 show with her rendition of ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ from Les Misérables. Simon Cowell said her voice was “extraordinary”, inviting comparisons with Paul Potts, who won the show in 2007.’
The Times media correspondent wrote: ‘Two years ago it was Paul Potts, the snaggle-toothed Welsh mobile phone salesman, who was propelled to international stardom by Britain’s Got Talent, the ITV entertainment show. But the programme’s producers believe that they have found an even more unlikely global singing success among this year’s contestants, in the form of a reclusive 48-year-old woman from a small Scottish village, who lives alone with her cat, Pebbles. Viewers of the first episode of the show’s new series, tomorrow at 7.45pm, will see Susan Boyle impress the usually caustic Simon Cowell, one of the programme’s three judges, into silence. In 2007 Potts became one of the world’s most unexpected singing successes after winning the show’s £100,000 prize and the chance to perform for the Queen at the Royal Variety Performance.’
The Times’ writer continued by telling of Susan’s dialogue with Ant and Dec and then the thunderstruck reactions of the judges, noting: ‘the stage is set for Ms Boyle, unemployed, from West Lothian, to follow the same path as Potts.’
Potts’s album, One Chance, had sold more than four million copies, and it had topped the charts in 14 countries by that spring weekend in 2009. The comparison with Potts was to be continually made in the days that followed. And why not? No one could better that, could they?
Andrew Llinares, executive producer of TalkbackThames, the programme’s maker, was quoted as saying: ‘She was a complete revelation. Everyone was cynical about her. She’s a woman who’s grown up in a tiny little village and has never got married. I think the expectation was that she wasn’t going to be any good. But that’s what’s sensational about the show. No one saw it coming.’
The Sun too recognised that there was a feeling in the air and again drew comparisons with opera-singing Potts and his rise to fame. The newspaper also wrote the first of what would turn out to be hundreds of thousands of words about Susan under the typically punchy headline: ‘PAULA POTTS…Susan, a virgin at 48, is tipped to follow a Winner.’
The article began: ‘Britain’s Got Talent has unearthed a female rival to opera-star winner Paul Potts – a 48-yearold Scottish VIRGIN. Susan Boyle – who admits she has “never been kissed” – is already being dubbed Paula Potts after her incredible audition. The West Lothian singleton wows judges Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan tomorrow night with her version of “I Dreamed a Dream” from the musical Les Misérables. She even gets a standing ovation just seconds into the song as Simon sits there open-mouthed. But the judges are at first just as uninterested as when former Carphone Warehouse salesman Paul walked on stage back in 2007.’
The Daily Mirror and its Scottish-based stable-mate the Daily Record agreed, along with reference to her unique hairstyle. ‘Jobless Scot Susan Boyle won over the Britain’s Got Talent judges by proving herself as a surprise singing sensation,’ said the Scots’ newspaper, and its English counterpart noted she had the ‘voice of an angel… sadly coupled with hair of a shaggy dog.’ It explained to its unknowing readers that ‘she has a soaring, beautiful voice that could grace a heavenly choir – but self-taught singer Susan Boyle has the hairdo from hell.’
There were, of course, other acts on the show, including a dynamic dance troupe from London called Flawless, and the Daily Star misread the script by giving prominence to several of the other artists ahead of Susan. The paper seemed especially interested in busty housewife Fabia Cerra, 35, a former world disco dance champion, who stripped onstage and who, at one point, lost one of her nipple tassels. The shot was censored by television chiefs for transmission – a large pair of Union Jacks were cleverly and strategically superimposed to hide her, or more likely the audience’s, embarrassment.
There was little that could be done to censor 57-yearold self-styled witch Gwyneth Marichi who ended up cursing the judges, especially Simon Cowell, for their early veto of her efforts.
The Star noted, in a surprisingly prosaic manner: ‘Other acts from the first show tipped to reach the final include father and son act Demetrios Demetriou, 40, and 14-yearold Lagi. The Greek Cypriots fool the judges into thinking they will perform a traditional Greek dance routine. But they become Stavros Flatley and strip off to show their large bellies
and do their own hilarious version of Riverdance.’
It added: ‘Cowell tells them: “You are one of my favourite dance acts ever.” And Demetrios jokes: “I think Prince Phillip will love us.”’ Then, almost as an afterthought, the newspaper comments: ‘Another big surprise is Susan Boyle. The drab 48-year-old from West Lothian – who claims she is single, lives with her cat Pebbles and has never been kissed – walks on stage to roars of laughter. She tells the judges she wants to be the new Elaine Paige. But within seconds she silences the giggles. She belts out “I Dreamed A Dream” from the musical Les Misérables and leaves everyone stunned by her amazing voice.’
Well, at least the newspaper got there in the end, although the phrase ‘another big surprise’ undoubtedly falls into the category of understatement of the year.
One of the oldest clichés in showbusiness – and outside of showbiz too – is the expression ‘The Day That Changed My Life.’ Saturday, 11 April was to be that day for Susan Boyle.
Over the breakfast tables that morning, there were more stories about Susan – still a totally unknown quantity to the nation as a whole and to the rest of the world – for the people of Britain to read. Only a tiny minority knew what she was capable of. No one knew the impact she was to have.
With showtime, albeit it pre-recorded showtime, less than 12 hours away, the momentum of the phenomenon that was to become ‘SuBo’ was beginning to increase, helped by the knowledge of the show that some newspapers already had. At a very slow rate, it must be said, the trickle that was to turn into a dam-bursting torrent was beginning.
Susan Boyle, the unknown, unmarried middle-aged woman from the middle of nowhere, was publicly quoted for the first time that day in a Scottish newspaper. ‘I’m very proud of being 48 and never having never been kissed. It’s not that I am not interested in men,’ she said. ‘If Mr Right comes along and it feels right then I’ll get married. Mind you I’m nearly 50 so I may be left on the shelf for good soon. But it’s good manners to wait until you’re asked.’